Fort Stanton

Fort Stanton was a United States Army fort near Lincoln, New Mexico.

It was built in 1855 by the 1st Dragoon and the 3rd and 8th Infantry Regiments to serve as a base of military operations against the Mescalero Apaches. Numerous campaigns were fought from 1855 until the 1880s. It was established to protect Hispano and White settlements along the Rio Bonito in the Apache Wars. Kit Carson, John "Black Jack" Pershing, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and Buffalo Soldiers of the 9th Cavalry all lived here.

Confederate forces occupied the outpost in 1861, at the beginning of the American Civil War. This U.S. military fortification was abandoned with the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1896.

The fort was originally established in part as the Mescalero Apache reservation. In 1873 the reservation was moved 30 miles (48 km) southwest to its current location.

In 1899, President William McKinley transferred Fort Stanton property from the War Department to the Marine Hospital Service, converting the military reservation to America's first federal tuberculosis sanatorium.

During World War II, Fort Stanton was used as a detention center for German and Japanese Americans arrested as "enemy aliens," and 411 German nationals taken from the luxury liner Columbus in 1939 (officially recorded as "distressed seamen paroled from the German Embassy" since the U.S. was still technically neutral at the time of their capture). The "enemy aliens" were mostly immigrant residents of the U.S. who had been taken into custody as suspected saboteurs shortly after the U.S. entered the war, despite a lack of supporting evidence or access to due process for most internees. The 31 German American internees, labeled "troublemakers" by the Department of Justice, were kept separate from the 17 Japanese Americans (also deemed "troublesome" by authorities) who were transferred to Fort Stanton on March 10, 1945. These new arrivals were deported to Japan later that year. The hospital was closed in 1953.

In 2008, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson announced plans to establish Fort Stanton as a living history venue, Fort Stanton State Monument, and funds to renovate headquarters, officers quarters, and stables.

Text adapted from “Fort Stanton (New Mexico)” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Fort Stanton ranks #3,662 of 8,134 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #69 of the 103 mapped in United States. Founded 1855, it is older than 8% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 607 atlas entries founded in the 19th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,537 times in the last 60 days, more than 60% of the atlas. See how United States compares in the castle statistics.

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